Islam and Christianity: On “Religions of Law”

The pursuit of mutual understanding has not infrequently led Muslims and Christians to define their religious traditions in stark doctrinal opposition one to the other. In this regard, the “religion of law” (Islam)/“religion of grace” (Christianity) dichotomy has a particularly venerable history. This article sets out to re-examine and deconstruct a couplet that would strike many as a platitude, first by giving an account of the Sunni tradition of law-generation, situated in the broad context of the many options represented by different Islamic sects, and then by revisiting the paradigmatic understanding of law in the Christian dispensation worked out by Aquinas. This exposition leads to the conclusion that any simple opposition is to be avoided at all costs, obfuscating, as it does, much more than it elucidates. Furthermore, Christianity emerges from our chosen perspective as, in some sense, more essentially a “religion of law” than Islam ever could be.     

One-year retention of general and sequence-specific skills in a probabilistic,serial reaction time task

Procedural skills such as riding a bicycle and playing a musical instrument play a central role in daily life. Such skills are learned gradually and are retained throughout life. The present study investigated 1-year retention of procedural skill in a version of the widely used serial reaction time task (SRTT) in young and older motor-skill experts and older controls in two experiments. The young experts were college-age piano and action video-game players, and the older experts were piano players. Previous studies have reported sequence-specific skill retention in the SRTT as long as 2 weeks but not at 1 year. Results indicated that both young and older experts and older non-experts revealed sequence-specific skill retention after 1 year with some evidence that general motor skill was retained as well. These findings are consistent with theoretical accounts of procedural skill learning such as the procedural reinstatement theory as well as with previous studies of retention of other motor skills.     

Recognition and Recall-Like Processes in the Long-Term Reconstruction of Order

Abstract

Four experiments examined whether the recovery of an item's position in a sequence taps processes similar to recognition and/or recall. Across the experiments, subjects either recalled, recognised, or made position judgements about list items that differed in word frequency. Typical word frequency effects were found in recall and recognition, but frequency failed to affect measures of position memory consistently across the four experiments. Despite the apparent procedural similarities across tasks, it appears that the recovery of position information may tap mnemonic processes that are different from those tapped by recognition and recall. Implications of these findings for current models of position memory are discussed.     

Evidence of Common Timing Processes in the Control of Manual,Orofacial, and Speech Movements

Recent investigations of timing in motor control have been interpreted as support for the concept of brain modularity. According to this concept, the brain is organized into functional modules that contain mechanisms responsible for general processes. Keele and colleagues (Keele & Hawkins, 1982; Keele & Ivry, 1987; Keele, Ivry, & Pokorny, 1987; Keele, Pokorny, Corcos, & Ivry, 1985) demonstrated that the within-subject variability in cycle duration of repetitive movements is correlated across finger, forearm, and foot movements, providing evidence in support of a general timing module. The present study examines the notion of timing modularity of speech and nonspeech movements of the oral motor system as well as the manual motor system. Subjects produced repetitive movements with the finger, forearm, and jaw. In addition, a fourth task involved the repetition of a syllable. All tasks were to be produced with a 400-ms cycle duration; target duration was established with a pacing tone, which then was removed. For each task, the within-subject variability of the cycle duration was computed for the unpaced movements over 20 trials. Significant correlations were found between each pair of effectors and tasks. The present results provide evidence that common timing processes are involved not only in movements of the limbs, but also in speech and nonspeech movements of oral structures.     

Goal gradient in helping behavior

People are more likely to pitch in as charitable campaigns approach their goals. Such “goal gradient helping” occurs in part because late-stage efforts provide donors with a heightened sense of personal impact, an influential source of satisfaction from prosocial acts. Using web robot technology in an Internet field study of micro-lending, Study 1 demonstrated that charity contribution rates increase as recipients approach their fundraising goals. Study 2, a large-scale field experiment, found that funds close to reaching campaign goals received more donations than did funds far from reaching campaign goals. Study 3 replicated the goal gradient helping effect in a controlled scenario experiment, and mediational analyses showed that increased perceived impact of late-stage contributions, and the resultant satisfaction from this impact, explain goal gradient helping. In conclusion, people are not charitable simply to be kind or to relieve negative emotions; they find satisfaction from having personal influence in solving a social problem.     

Self-regulation,health, and behavior: A perceptual-cognitive approach

Abstract

Self-regulation systems are designed to adapt to threats via coping procedures that make efficient use of resources based upon valid representations of the environment. We discuss two components of the common-sense model of health threats: illness representations (e.g., content and organization) and coping procedures (e.g., classes of procedure and their attributes - outcome expectancies, time-lines, dose-efficacy beliefs, etc.). Characteristics of each of these domains, and the connection between the two, are critical to understanding human adaptation to problems of physical health. Rather than posing a barrier to factors outside the person that control behavior, an emphasis on subjective construal involves a view of the person as an active problem-solver embedded in a bidirectional system of sensitivity and responsiveness vis á vis the social, physical, and institutional environments in which health threats occur and through which intervention efforts may be directed.